Community Housing Provider Regulations- a mixed bag

Community Housing Aotearoa (CHA) has reviewed the
long-awaited regulations for Community Housing Providers
that were published in the NZ Gazette on 10 April.

CHA
welcomes Fiona Fitzgerald as the Interim Manager for the
Community Housing Regulatory Authority. “She knows the
sector well and has built a solid reputation as a pragmatic,
forward-thinking leader,” confirmed Scott Figenshow,
Director of CHA.

CHA is pleased to note that the recently
formed CHRA has moved quickly to demonstrate transparency in
how it will work, “to support the growth of a fair,
efficient, and transparent community housing sector,”
through ‘on-going engagement with CHPs, both from a
monitoring perspective, and as a source of best practice and
encouragement.”

It is delighted that following feedback
from CHA, CHRA’s intention is “not [to be] unnecessarily
prescriptive about how a CHP demonstrates compliance’ in
recognition that an organisation’s ability to provide a
range of information sources will ‘largely depend on the
size and sophistication of the organisation and their level
of risk exposure”.

There is also recognition from CHRA
that the Community Housing Sector has already been
conducting voluntary quality assurance through its
Accreditation system, with CHRA prepared to ‘make an
operational decision on a case-by-case basis to accept
accreditation reports in full or in part as evidence to
support of compliance with the Performance Standards.’ CHA
believes that the discretionary nature of this decision
belies a lack of understanding about the robustness of the
Global-mark accredited system: a quality assurance process
that is highly valued in both the UK and Australian
community housing sector.

CHA looks forward to working
with CHRA on adopting the Accreditation system as a
pre-requisite for specific evidence on CHRA performance
standards and on joint recognition that the system provides
a performance benchmarking tool for supporting
excellence.

“We are disappointed that many of our more
strategic points made in submissions were not dealt with in
this phase of the reforms. In particular, we find the
definition of Community Housing Provider to be structurally
flawed in that it does not confirm the organization operates
on a not for dividend basis, essential to ensure that public
investment is retained and recycled.

We understood such a
test was part of tax legislation, and unless the two are
aligned there appears to be a ‘disconnect’, which places
our members in uncertain territory. We thought officials and
Ministers understood this which leaves us wondering why it
hasn’t been dealt with,” Mr. Figenshow said.

A key
recommendation of the social housing reforms as set out in
the Housing Shareholders Advisory Group report was
coordination across multiple ministries to ensure
transparency and consistency of services. CHA congratulates
Ministers Smith and Bennett for securing the availability of
the Income Related Rent Subsidy to families who secure their
home from a community housing organization as a big step
forward in implementing this holistic approach.

CHA does
however have concerns that in the absence of an overall
strategy, the predominantly piecemeal, rushed nature of
reforms will lead to confusion and contradictions in
legislation and CHA notes that Ministers Smith and
Bennett’s 13 April 2014 press release “Major makeover
for social housing” from 13 April now states that 20% of
the country’s social housing is to be provided by
non-government organisations by 2017, 3 years earlier than
the 2020 goal the community housing sector has been working
towards. The community housing sector has the expertise and
capacity to deliver.

It now eagerly awaits renewed
government commitment to make it happen through additional
Social Housing Fund capital, an extension of IRRS to
community housing tenancies and the decision to transfer
HNZC stock. Without this commitment, the traction to deliver
on its vision will come to a grinding halt: a devastating
outcome for New Zealand communities who are struggling to
find affordable housing.

CHA will continue to work
collaboratively /cooperatively with officials and ministers
to bring about its vision of ‘All New Zealanders
well-housed’.

CHA has released a comparison summary of
the regulations versus its submission at
www.communityhousing.org.nz

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